Use these Forza Horizon 5 tips to improve your skills behind the wheel start racking up points in the Horizon Festival. Since there’s a wide variety of racing series to compete in, be it high-speed road racing or off-road rallies, you’ll need to be a skilled, multidisciplinary driver if you want to enter the Mexico Horizon Festival Hall of Fame, and that means understanding as much about the game as possible as well as knowing how to drive well.
However, there are plenty of other things to do outside of races in Forza Horizon 5, such as PR Stunts, Horizon Stories, and Barn Finds, and you’ll naturally want to be filling out your car collection. That means there’s a lot to learn and bear in mind, so whether you’re new to the FH series, or you’re a seasoned veteran with countless podiums, here are 10 Forza Horizon 5 tips and tricks to get you started.
Customize your driving assists to get comfortable
When you first get seated in Forza Horizon 5, you might notice that the driving feels a bit odd as you race to the festival. This is because the game has a whole suite of driving assists turned on by default. However, that can mean that you end up fighting the assists a bit, so you should customize your driving assists to make things as comfortable or challenging as you want. You can find the assist options by pausing Forza Horizon 5 to open the Campaign tab, navigating to Settings, and then looking under the Difficulty submenu.
Having put many hours into several Forza Horizon games, here are the assists settings I recommend for smooth driving in Forza Horizon 5:
- Braking: Anti-Lock On
- Steering: Simulation
- Traction Control: On
- Stability Control: Off
- Shifting: Automatic
Assists and difficulty also affect your rewards
Turning certain assists off or on will not only affect how cars handle but also your Credit (CR) payouts for participating in races. With the above settings and Average Drivatar difficulty, you’ll get 25% more CR. Turning Traction Control off bumps this up to 35% and switching to manual gear shifting takes this up to 50%!
Other settings like Driving Line, and Damage are down to personal preference offering extra challenges but no other benefitst. For an easy time, keep Driving Line on Full and Damage on Cosmetic.
Accolade Points progress the Forza Horizon 5 Horizon Adventure campaign
Forza Horizon 5’s Horizon Adventure campaign adds a little more narrative and purpose to the usual racing series seen in previous FH titles and lets players choose how and when they tackle different activities. The key thing to know is that you must earn Accolade Points to get Horizon Adventure Chapter unlocks. This is essentially your main progression route as getting chapter unlocks lets you try out new activities in each of the event series.
Conveniently, doing pretty much anything in Forza Horizon 5 gets you Accolade Points, but completing and winning races will get you the most. You can check your progress to unlocking the next adventure chapter unlock by opening the map and looking in the top-right corner of your screen. You can also check the Accolades page which shows every single Accolade challenge available or more Accolade points and bonus rewards, such as cosmetics and even cars like the Forza Horizon 5 Revuelto.
You can do whatever you want, when you want
Even with the franchise’s first campaign, Forza Horizon 5 still follows the driving playground philosophy of the previous games and lets you do more or less whatever you want, when you want. Obviously, the Horizon Adventure campaign progression adds some restrictions in what you can access right away but you will quickly unlock a whole host of race series and events as you play.
Because of the freedom you have to spend chapter unlocks pretty much however you want, the campaign isn’t especially linear. You could start with the Horizon Wilds Dirt Racing series and do a few races to reach the next chapter, but then you can unlock the Horizon Apex Road Racing series and alternate between those two race types to get to the chapter after that and so on, or you could methodically work through each race series and event before moving on to the next one. All activities can be replayed too to unlock any Accolade challenges you might have missed the first time.
Declutter the map with map filters
As you play through Forza Horizon 5, you’ll start unlocking lots of different activity types that quickly start to flood your map with bright icons, and it can be a bit overwhelming. Press RB/R1 while looking at the map to bring up the list of all map icons, letting you toggle them on and off. This makes the map less messy and helps you focus on the specific activities you want to complete.
Weather and time of day seriously affect your driving
If you’ve not played a Forza game before, you might be unfamiliar with how much your car’s performance can be hindered by the weather and time of day. Forza Horizon 5 has a day-night cycle, weather, and seasons, all of which affect driving conditions.
You’ll notice that cars can be harder to handle at night due to the cooler temperatures, which is especially evident in Street Races. Roads covered in rain will obviously be much more slippery, so you’ll have to brake much sooner than usual if you want to avoid skidding off the track. Seasons will also massively alter the terrain of the Mexico map altogether, introducing drier or wetter areas, rain, and snow. Pay attention to the conditions as you’ll need to bring the best Forza Horizon 5 cars for the job – the fastest Forza Horizon 5 cars aren’t always the best when it’s raining!
You’ll get loads of cars and Credits from Wheelspins
The Forza Horizon 5 car list is incredibly extensive and many of them are very pricey, but luckily you’ll get plenty of cars and Credits for free from Wheelspin lucky dips. While the cars you get are rarely incredible, they are a great way of filling out your collection and getting cars that you might not think of buying. Getting CR will also bolster your bank account outside of participating in races, so it’ll really help you save up for those extravagant purchases as it all adds up.
Wheelspins are also quite easy to get from races, Accolade rewards, levelling up, and other activities. You can also get Super Wheelspins which offer triple the rewards, giving you a great chance at getting something good, although they are much rarer than regular Wheelspins.
Spend your Skill Points for each of your cars
Every car has its own basic skill tree system known as Forza Horizon 5 Car Mastery. This system allows you to unlock perks to get improved rewards and enhanced Skill Chain scores while driving a particular car. However, you need Skill Points to unlock these perks, and Skill Points are earned by performing Skill Chains, which are initiated by performing tricks and feats while driving. Continuously performing such tricks will increase your Skill Chain score and multiplier, but crashing will cause you to lose your chain – it’s always good to aim for Forza Horizon 5 Ultimate Skill Chains to get plenty of Skill Points.
It’s imperative that you remember to spend your Skill Points as you can unlock XP boosts, Wheelspins, and improvements that make Skill Chains build up faster and harder to break. Spending Skill Points and performing Skill Chains also awards lots of XP, so you’ll also be levelling up as you drive with style. Pause the game, navigate to the ‘Cars’ tab, and then choose ‘Car Mastery’ to spend any Skill Points for your current car.
Buy houses for their unique perks
Don’t overlook the houses in Forza Horizon 5. While they might seem a bit pointless since you can’t go inside them, they have a lot of useful benefits. Buying each one will get you some instant rewards, such as Wheelspins, Super Wheelspins, and even a Barn Find rumor for one of the houses. You can also have one set as your home which determines where you spawn whenever you boot up FH5.
Importantly, some of the houses also have a permanent perk that will help you out on your Horizon adventures. Owning the Buenas Vistas beach house on the southwest coast of the Mexico map allows you to fast travel to any point on any road on the map, which is incredibly convenient for getting around. The Casa Bella house allows radio DJs to start playing Skill Songs over the radio, which cause Skill Chain points to double for the duration of the song. Finally, if you own the Hotel Castillo property near Guanajuato, you’ll be granted a free Wheelspin every day that you log in to Forza Horizon 5.
Drone Mode is great for scouting areas
Use Drone Mode under the ‘Creative Hub’ tab of the pause menu to pilot a drone and scout out certain areas, rather than having to scope things out in a car. Drone Mode is really handy for things like Forza Horizon 5 Barn Finds, since you can check out the rumor areas very easily to find the barns. You can also use it to examine and plan your routes for the stunt activities like Drift Zones, Danger Signs, and Trailblazes.
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